like the
phoenix!"

"Sweet sister mine," answered Edith, "the singer doth mean to image out
in the phoenix the rising of our Lord, in whom we all live again."

And Thyra said, mournfully:

"But the phoenix sees once more the haunts of his youth--the things and
places dear to him in his life before. Shall we do the same, O Edith?"

"It is the persons we love that make beautiful the haunts we have known,"
answered the betrothed. "Those persons at least we shall behold again,
and whenever they are--there is heaven."

Harold could restrain himself no longer. With one bound he was at
Edith's side, and with one wild cry of joy he clasped her to his heart.

"I knew that thou wouldst come to-night--I knew it, Harold," murmured the
betrothed.

CHAPTER III.

While, full of themselves, Harold and Edith wandered, hand in hand,
through the neighbouring glades--while into that breast which had
forestalled, at least, in this pure and sublime union, the wife's
privilege to soothe and console, the troubled man poured out the tale of
the sole trial from which he had passed with defeat and shame,--Haco drew
near to Thyra, and sate down by her side. Each was strangely attracted
towards the other; there was something congenial in the gloom which they
shared in common; though in the girl the sadness was soft and resigned,
in the youth it was stern and solemn. They conversed in whispers, and
their talk was strange for companions so young; for, whether suggested by
Edith's song, or the neighbourhood of the Saxon grave-stone, which
gleamed on their eyes, grey and wan through the crommell, the theme they
selected was of death. As if fascinated, as children often are, by the
terrors of the Dark King, they dwelt on those images with which the
northern fancy has associated the eternal rest, on--the shroud and the
worm, and the mouldering bones--on the gibbering ghost, and the
sorcerer's spell that could call the spectre from the grave. They talked
of the pain of the parting soul, parting while earth was yet fair, youth
fresh, and joy not yet ripened from the blossom--of the wistful lingering
look which glazing eyes would give to the latest sunlight it should
behold on earth; and then he pictured the shivering and naked soul,
forced from the reluctant clay, wandering through cheerless space to the
intermediate tortures, which the Church taught that none were so pure as
not for a whole to undergo; and hearing, as it wandered, th